Something I did without ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger, but certainly because of her, while she was in Kingston: go to the Jackson County Fair. She had brought a dozen photographs to enter into competition and while she would learn how they finished anyway --- I had promised to pick them up the day after the fair ended --- she wouldn't know what the field looked like. Only I could learn that and bring her the news. (It happens that when she got online that night, we weren't able to talk about it, because she had misplaced her phone and we were trying to work out where it could possibly be. She found it in the morning, in one of the places we thought likely but couldn't find in the dark.)
The Fair was set up roughly as usual, as best I know usual. The shame is that magician Aaron Radatz was not there, his stage taken up by a band playing the hits of the 80s. So we can't be suspected of low-key pursuing him by running into him (for me) a third time or (for bunnyhugger) a fourth. No; he's getting ready for the Halloween shows at ... Six Flags America, the Washington DC-area park we would have gone to had Roger's health not been so precarious. Uhm.
Anyway. I'm not sure whether they had a different company doing rides or what, but the ticket pricing was way higher than I ever expected. The Merry-Go-Round was a 12-ticket ride. The Gravitron, 15. Many kiddie rides were 9. A ticket wasn't a dollar, like other fairs we've been to, but still. It's clear they wanted everyone to just buy a wristband already, which would pay out after about three rides. I thought about it but in the end decided I didn't feel like there was anything I wanted to ride enough to get one.
The animal exhibits were the collection you might expect. I spent a lot of time looking at the chickens, the turkeys, and the rabbits, particularly, as they're the ones most interesting to bunnyhugger and she'll love seeing my pictures of them in seven months. So very many Californian rabbits, all looking in various ways disapproving of things.
Ah, but to the exhibit house, where once again the ham radio people were set up but this time I avoided because, as a bearded 50-something white guy I have no natural defenses against them. The photos were arranged on temporary walls, a whole bunch of 4-H submissions first and then everyone else's, grouped by categories I didn't know offhand. I spent a good while looking at pictures and not seeing any of bunnyhugger's, before finding finally one of her black-and-white portraits. It did not win. Some more searching and I found another black-and-white, which also didn't win anything. I kept looking around feeling how awful she would feel if there weren't a single win in this bunch when, finally, a fifth-place finish in color portraits broke the dry spell.
From there her finish was much better. She didn't do what she had at Calhoun last year --- get a Best in Class --- but she did get a couple third- and second-place ribbons, the previously mentioned fifth place, and a blue-ribbon first place. I'm not sure the judge's ... judgement, for some of these, as there were pictures she had that were clearly better than the competition. There were also some that were eerily close. Her entry in the Summer Fun category, for example, was a picture of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's Giant Dipper pulling into the station. Entered by someone else --- who I noticed had entered even more pictures in even more categories than bunnyhugger had --- was a photo of a Big Dipper, the kiddie coaster, models of which are at many amusement parks, pulling into the station. Neither won anything.
Altogether I went around and found eleven pictures and six ribbons and ... got annoyed that I could not find the twelfth. Had I misunderstood the count? No, she was very clear when we went through the process of making the backing boards needed to mount pictures that it was twelve. Finally, finally, I found the twelfth picture, a close-up of plants, that didn't win a ribbon though a similar one get a third place. There's no explaining the judging.
Incidentally, for a vibe check, while I was only at the fairgrounds for a couple hours I didn't see anyone wearing a Trump T-shirt. There were a couple funny ones at T-shirt stands, like one about his being ``saved by god'', and there was the county Republicans booth in the vendors section of the fair, but nobody wearing colors. Which is the more remarkable because Jackson, Michigan, is one of the places with a strong claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Sunday morning I went back to pick up bunnyhugger's pictures and to look around at what the fair looked like being disassembled. Last year there was a long line, maybe two dozen people long, to pick up photos ahead of me. This year? No line at all. I don't know if they had a better scheme for organizing pictures this year or if I just got there at rush hour last year and not this.
As for the fair disassembly, well, the memento mori is the signs beside the baked-goods and vegetables stands, telling where the dumpsters are to throw out the entrants. Yes, even the prize-winning string beans (or whatever) are now, after a week-plus sitting in the air, garbage. Most of this judged-to-be-exceptional produce would not even go eaten by people. I took a picture of the sign and some blue-ribbon-winning plates but I suspect they won't want that in the photography section next year.
You know what you've never seen around here? Pictures of my workplace. Or, my former workplace, since I was relocated to a new spot. But please enjoy a couple pictures taken because I spotted a few things worth the attention.
First, a thing I could see from my desk every office day: a glitch in the Matrix regarding the Exit sign and its reflection.
Ah, but here's the good stuff. Did you know we had a The Liberty Bell in Lansing? And you could just go up to it and touch it, even knock on it to make it ring. It sounded, eh.
Here's one of the plaques beneath it explaining. This is one of the replicas made after World War II as a bond-raising activity.
Picture from the side so you can get an idea how well it duplicates the real thing, if you've seen the real thing from this angle.
As you can see, it nearly got the spelling of Pennsylvania right.
And here's the setting, in a common area in the basement, where you can have lunch or casual chats or stuff. The montage to the right is a series of photos that reflect the sun setting on Lake Michigan.
Trivia: Western Union spent US$3,000,000 between March 1864 and 1867 building the Overland Line, a telegraph cable from the United States through British Columbia, Alaska, Siberia, and Russia to connect the United States with Europe. It was abandoned, having reached Siberia, when Cyrus Field's trans-atlantic cable finally succeeded. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.
Currently Reading: His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine, S C Gwynne.
